Good Cop, Bad Cop: Confessions of a Reluctant Policeman

Once an enemy of the apartheid police, Andrew Brown has worked as a police reservist for almost twenty years. In this book he takes the reader on patrol with him – into the ganglands of the Cape Flats, the townships of Masiphumelele and Nyanga, and the high-walled Southern Suburbs.

Good Cop, Bad Cop is a personal account of the perilous and often conflicting work of a SAPS officer. Brown describes being shot at, arresting suspects in a drug bust, chasing down leads in a homicide investigation and keeping the peace during the UCT student protests.

Brown illustrates how difficult the job of the police is, and how easy it is to react with undue force. Yet he argues passionately that the role of the police is to be a service to communities and not a force to suppress social discontent.

Gripping and thought-provoking, this is a fascinating insight into the social fabric of current South Africa.

Andrew Brown is an author, an advocate and a reservist sergeant in the South African Police Service. While a student in the 1980s he was arrested after confrontation with police and was sentenced to imprisonment. On appeal, the Cape High Court overturned the sentence and imposed community service instead.

Brown now practises as an advocate in the same High Court that heard his appeal. Since 1999 he has also worked as a police reservist, his duties taking him from the tree-lined avenues of Rosebank to the squalor of Masiphumelele.

His previous books are the novels Inyenzi, Coldsleep Lullaby, Refuge, Solace and Devil’s Harvest, as well as Street Blues, about his earlier experiences as a police reservist. He has won the Sunday Times Fiction Prize and his work has been shortlisted for the Alan Paton Award and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Africa Region). He is married, with three children.